What the Tories' latest PPB didn't mention: the UK has grown at a slower rate than every G20 country except Italy and Japan.

David Cameron speaks to youth during his visit to the Mercedes-Benz UK National Apprentice Academy in Milton Keynes. Photograph: Getty Images.

As you might have noticed by now, David Cameron is keen to remind us that we're in a "global race". In the latest Conservative party political broadcast (Britain in the Global Race), the PM declares: "we're in a global race competing against these new rising countries in the south and the east of our world, China and India, now I want Britain to be a success story".

But while Cameron's international perspective might be commendable, it's not clear that it's in his interests to adopt it. If we are in a "global race", it's one we're unambiguously losing. As an analysis of growth by the House of Commons library showed last month, Britain is at the bottom of the G20 league table, having grown by just 0.4 per cent since the 2010 Spending Review, a worse performance than every country except Japan and Italy.

Worse, as the TUC's Duncan Weldon has shown, IMF data reveals that the UK is currently 158th out of 184 countries, with total growth in the last three years of just 2.2 per cent, compared to 8.4 per cent for Germany, 7.7 per cent for Canada, 6.5 per cent for the US, 6 per cent for Japan and 3.5 per cent for France. While Cameron sets his sights on India and China, we're lagging behind "sclerotic" Europe.

Fortunately for the PM, voters aren't in the habit of consulting IMF tables and, after years of Labour "profligacy", are largely resigned to austerity. Liam Byrne's famously unhelpful note to David Laws ("Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid there is no money left"), cited by Cameron at the start of the broadcast, remains the gift that keep giving.